Happy Birthday, VS Reid

VS Reid (Order of Jamaica, Literature) an eminent Jamaican author, journalist, and historian, is usually credited, along with Trinidad and Tobago's V.S. Naipaul and St Lucian Derek Walcott, as shaping modern Caribbean writing. He died on August 25, 1987. Vic Reid was 74 years old.

Reid, a reporter and sometimes editor of the Public Opinion, a weekly newspaper, was educated at Kingston Technical High School.

New Day, his first book, was published in the 1940s, and The Leopard was influenced by the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya during the 1950s. VS Reid also wrote several books about Jamaican history:Sixty-Five is set in 1865 and is inspired by the Morant Bay Rebellion. It was a popular textbook in high schools.

Mount Ephraim is based on the Sam Sharpe rebellion of the 1830s.

Quote: "I write to make black people feel proud of themselves and their history."

From The Daily Gleaner

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Sixty Five by VS Reid